peterab

While this is probably the most important reason for most kids, if this were 100% true we wouldn't have any trains at all. In fact in the last four years we've had quite a lot of complete train sets, Emerald Night, Yellow Cargo Train, Red Passenger Train, Toy Story Western Train, Hogwart's Express 3, Maersk Train, Red Cargo Train, Horizon Express, Constitution Train Chase. This must be some sort of record for a four year period, so at least some kids like trains. In all probability the sales of LEGO trains are at an all time high. The difficulty is this is also true for most of the other themes as well, and the other themes are more popular with most kids. Since the sales are low (compared to other themes at least, even if at an all time high historically) any smaller influence that reduces sales becomes important. Which is why I still maintain part of the reason trains sales suffer is because particular trains are not universally recognisable. It's probably not the most important reason, but it has a cumulative effect. I think it even shows in the train selection we've had; three of the trains are from movies which one can expect were familiar to most kids because they are part of the global culture, the three city trains were sort of generic and trying for broad appeal, and the ones most recognisable as particular trains were limited exclusives. Of the kids that do care about trains, at least some will care if the design of a LEGO train is familiar to them.

And part of the reason they don't sell is the large differences between networks. While trucks also differ, they are far more recognisable, particularly ones with functional features such as rubbish trucks, fir engines or cement mixers. People tend to like things that are more familiar to them. It's hard to make a very generic train without it being too simplified for AFOLs, and as soon as you start putting in a lot of detail you risk making it specific to one country or continent. I'm always amazed that whatever train LEGO produces there will be some people saying it is unrealistic while at the same time some will say it's very near to a particular prototype. For me I now judge new train sets for a few different purposes; a) Will the train serve as a good parts pack for Mocs ? b) Does it fit with the time and place I've chosen for my layout ? c) Is it a good looking train useful for running at public exhibitions on my clubs layout ? Pretty much every train falls into at least one of these categories to some extent. Furthermore I know if we all buy the current trains, the theme is more likely to grow in the future.

The best predictor for future behaviour is past behaviour. We have 50 years of proof that complete train sets sell better than single cars. You have no proof that this situation has changed. You are the one making the claim that things have changed, yet you cant give any indication that suggests that this is the case. Your argument appears to be "I want it, so many other people must want it too" but that is an insufficient argument. Most likely there are tens of thousands of people who do want single carriages, but in all probability only hundreds of thousands would be a convincing number to get your set stocked in major retailers. Friends was a huge risk given past performance of themes aimed at girls, but their market research suggested Friends would be different if they replaced the minifigure. Unmet demand is a far better problem than stock that wont sell, so what you are using as a bad example seems to me to be good business. While there are sets that are produced for reasons other than immediate profit, most of them have other justifications; Promotional sets, which act as cheap introductions to the wider products. Tour sets which help to sell the factory tours. LEGO brand exclusives which make the online and LEGO brand shops attractive because they have something no-one else has, and allow LEGO to produce sets that might not meet the needs of the large chain retailers, such as lower volumes for larger sets. This is where the Creator expert trains fit. I cant see TLC replacing an exclusive set aimed at another fan base with a single train carriage, since a) you would probably disappoint more of the other fan base than pleased train fans, and b) why replace another typically large exclusive set with a smaller set with lower profit. The main problem with single carriages is; If you propose to design a single carriage set, why not make it a complete train, and make it much more attractive to buyers and the retailers? Or make the sort of supporting sets you know sell better, like railway crossings or vehicles? You must be blind if you can't see the proof here. No train related Cusoo suggestion is anywhere near gaining enough support to go into production, despite some of them being very clever and desirable designs. It is clear proof the fan bases for trains are smaller than other sets. Other designs on Cusoo have gained 10,000 support in days. Some of the train suggestions have gained only a few hundred support in many months, despite being promoted here and other LEGO train forums. Adults are estimated to be about 5% of the market, clearly not enough to put a set into production without good support from the target market of children. Past sales to the target market of children have always been bad. I still don't understand where you see the miraculous new interest coming from. The train market among children is small, the train market among AFOLs is small. Luckily it is large enough to put some complete train sets on the shelves at Christmas every few years. No, but I don't think the failures are intentional, and I don't think LEGO will repeat them in a decades time just because a few fans think the situation might have changed. Immediate profit perhaps not, but long term profit yes. Promotional items sell other products, but single cars don't appear to work that way because of the reluctance of retailers to reorder stock (there's plenty of anecdote that suggests not being able to buy a complete train frustrates many customers). Yes. I don't think this supports your argument. If kids already buy the bigger sets, why give them the opportunity to buy less? Yes, but allowing them to might not be the best business decision. When single engines and carriages have been available, the larger sets didn't sell well, only the engines did. The single carriages were left on the shelves and eventually put on sale. Yes, but for the same reasons as above it's not necessarily a good business decision to let them. Particularly since many other City sets exist which they will most likely settle for anyway without risking cannibalising the sales of the large train sets. You miss my point over and over. It's not a matter of if they will sell or not. It's a matter of if the will sell enough. LEGO clearly believe their sales are better/easier/more efficient if they restrict trains to complete sets only. Any suggestion to go away from what they currently do needs to come along with an explanation of why changing will be better/easier/more efficient than hat they currently do. All your suggestions fail because they don't actually address the sales issue. The historical examples of things unexpectedly selling are accompanied by a change in situation, which you have said might have happened. A good business case isn't lets just do it in case fifty years of experience is wrong, it tries to predict and understand the change, and base a case around it. You are suggesting things might have changed, but make no concrete suggestion what it is, that might have changed. Without that you have wishful thinking not a convincing argument.

If your aim is to have the set widely available for parents and grandparents to buy as gifts, then stores will only stock it if they believe it will sell well. I'm pretty sure the buyers for the stores don't like to stock individual carriages since they have never sold as well as complete train sets. The answer I've been given several times by various TLG employees of "why does TLC not make them" is because they don't sell well. I place more faith in TLC's ability to know (since they do actually do market research) than your guess of eBay being the tip of the iceberg. A friend of mine is a LEGO reseller, and he says LEGO really doesn't care about eBay resales, because they've already made their profit on the set. Selling individual cars might actually just spread sales away from the larger sets, across a wider range of sets with higher production, logistics and warehousing costs. And the fan bases for those sets are bigger than for trains since no train has reached 10,000 votes on Cusoo. That should illustrate the problem with your suggestions. You said current times are different because there were more adult fans now, my calculations showed it would be remarkable if they made any huge difference to the sales of a set. This was exactly the argument used ten years ago, and the sales were bad then, just as they have been for 50 years. I'm pretty sure to get TLC to do another experiment a fresh idea needs to be put forward, not rehashing the same old idea which is essentially "I want it so lots of others will too". There are two explanations for the fact that TLC don't make single carriages. The first is they don't think it's the best business decision. The second is they are unaware of the huge demand for these sets and they are making a big mistake. Which one sounds the most plausible given they are one of the largest toy companies in the world with a profit margin that is the envy of many industries?

Congratulations JopieK. Thanks for stepping up to the moderation task.

I watch for unpopular licensed products to go on sale. Toy Story and Prince of Persia sets were quite good sources of some nice rare coloured parts at cheap prices. A cheap Lone Ranger train would be a bonanza, it's already great value to part out into a bricklink store. I'd really love some new track pieces but new moulds require the expectation of large sales, and now Cusoo has ruled out new moulds, I can't really see how this would happen without a massive upswing in the popularity of trains among kids. Here's hoping for that blockbuster movie.

And I assume all these sets have a higher profit margin than individual train cars have in the past. Unless you can show me why sales of individual train cars are going to be miraculously different now I don't see a good argument here why they would make them. In fact as LEGO sales in general rise, and LEGO grows, it gets more and more risky and therefore unlikely while they have limited production resources. As others have said, they are barely able to keep up with demand for Friends, which they pretty much know will sell well. But the scale of these businesses is orders of magnitude smaller than LEGO's sales targets. They are only evidence that small business are happy to exploit the markets too small for LEGO to care about. Even Cusoo sets need a minimum of 10,000 likely sales to be considered worth the risk of production, and they are very niche products designed to find potential new markets. A few years ago one of the LEGO community guys said there were about 150,000 AFOLs. Lets say there is about double that now. In my experience AFOLs that like trains are a small part of the community, maybe a few percent, lets say 3% of 300,000 (this varies wildly from market to market, higher in western Europe and the US, particularly low in Asia). I'm still only seeing 18,000 sets if every train fan AFOL buys two. Compare that with the Mindstorms set that sold over a million (a special case since it was available so long), but I'd be very willing to be a fire engine would sell many multiples of 18,000. That's pretty much how I view a lot of sets. The modular buildings are particularly nicely coloured and good value for money bulk brick packs.

That train station really deserves its own post over in train tech when it's finished. The rest of your layout is of a really high standard too. I particularly like your tram and bus.

Sales going up doesn't really help the situation because a set which performs say 10% less than average, actually means far more sets not sold now. Poorly performing sets are even more of a liability. While they do have more of their own stores, and their online sales, I'd guess that's still a niche as far as sales goes. The conditions that have proved true for the past fifty years or so still hold true. Retailers only want to restock well selling sets. This is why people still often don't know LEGO makes trains, retailers only stock them when they are new, and at least around here once sales slow down they are not restocked. For the next few years you can still get them on LEGO's website but that doesn't really help people know they exist. The only ways I can see this happening is if the exclusives are expanded, or via Cusoo but I don't really hold out hope of either.

Your cars are far wider and therefore heavier than standard LEGO set cars, therefore you'll need more power than a standard train. You'll probably want two PF motors to pull it. I'd give up on the idea of pushing the whole thing, since that causes more friction since the bogies can twist (unlike when they are pulled). There are a bunch of examples of powered baggage cars with all the PF gear in them, take a look and either build your tender around the same idea, or a baggage car, immediately behind the tender.

I have to agree the smoke deflectors are great. Who feels like a campaign to get them made in black?

Is it available via the way back machine internet archive thingy? Might be worth a shot. I doubt Track Designer would be backed up. I'm pretty sure there will be someone in the community that could fix you up with a copy though.

Dark red is pretty dominant in the Fire Brigade, and the other two are not obvious choices for a building, but I'd be happy with any of these too.

I primarily buy the modular buildings as parts packs* so I agree with this sentiment to some extent, but in this case I'm not sure what rare colour would be appropriate. We've recently had sets with dark orange (TH), sand blue and brown(PS), sand green (haunted house) so those don't really need a re-run yet. Sand red seems to be out of consideration. In my mind, from the set name a tan, or white or light grey could be possible, but they're not exactly rare (though grey can be hard to amass a lot of brick in and would be popular with castle folk I guess). Perhaps the bright yellow from Friends might fit for the upper stories. Dark tan would also be a good option on reflection. * not to suggest these are bad sets or designs, it's just that every train club uses them because they are such nice buildings, that they end up being overused, and in some ways the default option. I like to own them too, but they're really more useful as low price per part sources of very nice colours in large amounts suitable for buildings. It's a win-win all round for me.

That's very nice. I'm always interested to see how other people build a 103. I'm very jealous of your 9V bogies, my PF ones don't run fast enough for such a powerful express engine. Maybe I need to change to the PF train motor instead and use your technique.

The original hasn't been updated for a very long time. There is a new version that hosts the bitmaps though http://www.fa-meier.de/lego/traindepot/depot

I wouldn't recommend the XL motor for a beginner in trains, building your own powered bogie with it can be difficult (it has enough power to push a badly designed bogie to pieces) and many people find it too slow. It can be the centre of a very powerful train, but sometimes requires a lot of trial and error to run reliably. I'd recommend you stick with a similar scale for your first train. Many train builders build slightly larger (7 and 8 wide are common) but for ease and reliability six wide can't be beaten. You can certainly use longer wagons if you want too, many of the official sets are longer, and as long as you are a little careful not to make them very heavy, they should be fine. As I said before for long wagons use double axle bogies to keep the friction down.

Historically Christmas trains have just been normal trains decorated with wreaths and possibly with Father Christmas on board. They are often museum engines such as steam engines pulling historic rolling stock. Obviously if you wish to make a complete fantasy train you can do anything you like. Many Christmas train sets take this approach, including the 10173 holiday train. From your choice of trains I'd probably use the Constitution engine, build a powered parcel van as described above, a passenger car (see the holiday train or My Own Train sets for ideas), and maybe a flat car with presents. Add some Christmas decorations and it should look the part. After that you could add more cars such as sleigh and reindeer transport, elf toy workshop, mail sorting wagon, or literally anything else that tickles your fancy. Be aware that you'll need two motors if you plan on having more than about six wagons, and longer wagons should stick to double axle bogies on each end to lower friction.

They did this with the BNSF and the Super Chief, but they probably need to pay licensing fees to do so, so if the sets don't sell well (like the BNSF and the Super Chief) they are even less profitable. There is probably a very good reason the Horizon Express looks very much like a TGV but doesn't have the official logos. For those of us that care enough we can customise it, for anybody else it doesn't make any difference.

Keeping costs down for us means reduced profits for LEGO, for a line that doesn't have the greatest sales anyway. The My Own Train line tried this, and didn't really succeed sales wise. They weren't the best designs perhaps, but the Santa Fe cars were also not a great success despite being an AFOL favourite now. The complete sets in the city range seem to be a more successful formula, and I can't see more than one train set in the creator expert range unless sales are very high, so the bigger the set the better IMHO.

Very nicely done, particularly hiding the receiver and battery, which can be difficult in a passenger car with a lot of windows.

The pictures of the winter village market appear to have 1x8 dark blue arches, so prepare for the price to become much more reasonable for CC rebuilds.

I too would love the return of sand red, but every time I've talked to a LEGO designer about this, they say it's almost impossible the colour could return. They'd have to remove another colour from the pallet to do it. The only vague possibility I can see is if Friends needs another pink at some stage.

This is a completely insane challenge of which I approve. Best of luck with it. I can't even begin to imagine the logistics of getting the track all together.

This size in red; http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?itemID=43121&colorID=5 is probably the cheapest, followed by the same in white (though cheap white ones will almost certainly be discoloured). Some of these windows have been in use for a very long time so are not rare. Any bulk lots from the 70's will be likely to contain some.